Backup, Marche team on Movie Chainer

Cloud-based app clarifies movies' revenues

The Backup Media Group, a Paris-based film financier, and the Marche du Film are teaming to launch app MovieChainer.

Cinando, the Marche’s online film database and networking hub, will host the integrated application starting this summer.

MovieChainer allows rights owners to keep records of their contracts and calculate what revenues they will receive — and when — throughout a film’s distribution life. App is available for download on Apple and Android platforms for smartphones and tablets, as well as PCs.

Project developer Jean Roman designed the app after joining Backup’s investment division B Media Management in order to monitor nearly 500 titles on its radar, said Backup head Joel Thibout.

Accessible anywhere from any platform, a simplified app will be offered free of charge, Roman added.

When a sales agent picks up a film, it often pays a minimum guarantee — for example, $500,000 on bigger pic — but charges a producer a commission on sales to foreign distributors — up to 25% — and agreed-on, capped expenses, such as a ceiling of $100,000. The app collates details such as this as well as of sales agents’ sales to foreign distributors, and adding other investor corridors. It also simulates revenue flows and investor corridors as a film’s sales and B.O. mount.

“Given that MovieChainer is totally Web-based, it doesn’t need installation and is very easy to use,” said the Marche du Film exec director Jerome Paillard.

For Backup Film’s head, Jean-Baptiste Balbin, Movie Chainer “is about efficiency and accuracy. We want to enable users to walk the same walk and talk the same talk when teaming up on a film.”